School bus driver calls for safety improvements April 6 marks seventh anniversary of tragic Humboldt bus crash Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
By: Maggie Macintosh Posted: 9:29 AM CDT Sunday, Apr. 6, 2025

A school bus driver from Beausejour is calling on the province to make student commutes safer by mandating seatbelts and no longer requiring automatic stops at controlled railway crossings.

For Jodi Ruta, the anniversary of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash is an emotional reminder of why she continues to devote so much of her time to researching road safety and advocacy.

This weekend marked seven years since 16 people died and 13 others were injured when a semi-trailer truck driver blew through a stop sign in rural Saskatchewan and collided with a coach bus.

A similar tragedy involving a yellow bus “is not an if, it’s a when,” if government officials do not make proactive changes, Ruta said.

“School buses are safe, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them safer,” she said, reflecting on nearly five years of making a living by driving children to and from classes, as well as growing up with a parent in the profession.

Ruta — better known as Jodi the Bus Driver to her 150,000 followers on TikTok — became a vocal advocate for standard three-point seatbelts after she was involved in a collision that shook her and her young students 1.5 years ago.

One of her other top concerns involves what she calls “a really old” and outdated regulation that mandates Manitoba bus drivers come to a full stop before approaching any railroad and open their service door to listen for trains and look in both directions.

Ruta said it makes little sense for bus drivers to be the only motorists who must follow this rule and do so even when an intersection has traffic lights. She is also a proponent of equipping all fleets with backlit stop signs and extendable arms, and bolstering public education on what various bus lights mean.

Modernized laws may not have prevented the crash that happened at an unmonitored crossing on Sept. 28, 2023, but they could protect others who must frequently halt at busier intersections on the Perimeter Highway and elsewhere, Ruta said.

RCMP officers responded to a call about an incident on Provincial Road 302 in the Rural Municipality of Brokenhead around 4 p.m. on that autumn school day.

The police report states a 38-year-old female driver was stopped to do a typical check at train tracks when her packed school bus was struck from behind.

“The crash itself, from the outside, didn’t look bad. The bus sustained minimal damage, but I wasn’t expecting the emotional toll it would take,” Ruta said, adding she will never forget how helpless she felt when children were crying and yelling out for their parents.

A 69-year-old man was charged with impaired driving, RCMP said.

There were approximately 40 students aboard the bus when he rear-ended it, but no one was seriously injured, per the report.

Ruta said the man who hit her bus was driving about 80 km/h, the speed limit on the highway.

None of her students suffered major injuries because they were all sitting properly so “compartmentalization,” the box-like design of school bus seats, worked as intended, she said, adding other drivers are not as lucky.

Families affected by a more recent collision that took place near Swan Lake reported their children were thrown from school bus seats and at least one teenager suffered multiple spine fractures as a result.

Transport Canada acknowledges that seatbelts can offer another layer of protection, but only if they are used properly. Meantime, the Canada Safety Council’s stance is these devices would not improve safety in a majority of crashes and could hinder evacuation.

A spokesperson for Manitoba’s transportation minister said her office is consulting with parents and community advocates and working with safety professionals and other levels of government.

“Minister (Lisa) Naylor puts the highest priority on safety and is looking at all options,” a provincial spokesperson said in a statement Friday.

The Opposition Tories have been looking into bus safety in recent months after connecting with Ruta, who lives in the constituency of the party’s interim leader, and other front-line service providers.

Ottawa recently supported two seatbelt pilots in school divisions in Ontario and B.C. The federal government has yet to publicly release its findings.

“We are waiting to see what comes from those reports before we recreate the wheel,” Progressive Conservative interim leader Wayne Ewasko told the Free Press in the winter after the crash near Swan Lake.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca